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<h1>Editor&rsquo;s Introduction</h1>

<h2 style="line-height: 36pt; font-weight: bold"
   >PART 2</h2>

<h2 style="margin-bottom: 3pt">The Ordeal of
   <span style="font-style: italic">The Ordeal of Richard Feverel:</span></h2>

<h2 style="margin-top: 3pt"
   >Procedures and Goals</h2>

<h2 style="margin-top: 14pt; margin-bottom: 0.5in"
   >Barbara Heritage</h2>

<h3>A Work in Progress</h3>

<p>Welcome to <span style="font-style: italic; text-decoration: underline;
">The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</span><span style="text-decoration:
underline; ">: A Web Archive of Documentary and Critical Editions</span>.
This project was started at the University of Virginia in response to two
stimulating and inspiring courses taught in the spring of 2008: Jerome
McGann&rsquo;s &ldquo;<span
style="font-variant: small-caps; text-transform: none;">c</span>19
Discourse Formations&rdquo; and David Vander Meulen&rsquo;s
&ldquo;Introduction to Scholarly Editing.&rdquo; Even as we searched for an
appropriate version of <span style="font-style: italic; ">Richard Feverel
</span>to read in McGann&rsquo;s class
(a process described in more detail at
the end of the first part of my introduction), I looked for a work to edit
as my final project for Vander Meulen&rsquo;s course.
It did not take me long to
put two and two together. In addition, I had the good fortune to be engaged
to Carsten Clark, a computer programmer with extra time on his hands and
seemingly infinite patience; he is the author of the dynamic html
presentation system that comprises the website.  Finally, being a book
collector by nature and a rare book curator by profession, I was unafraid of
starting a new collection. And so it all began.</p>

<p class="Indent">The result is the present archive, which contains working
documentary editions of the chapter &ldquo;Indicates the Approaches of
Fever&rdquo;
as published in the original 1859 Chapman and Hall, 1875 Tauchnitz, and 1896
Archibald Constable editions. These new, searchable electronic documents
preserve original pagination, original line breaks, and offer notes in
dynamic html (a combination of JavaScript, CSS, and html) that provide full
information on my historical collation of eight different texts of textual
and/or scholarly significance:</p>

<ul class="Plain">

<li>1859 :
    The Chapman and Hall first edition / CH1859</li>

<li>1875 :
    The Bernhard Tauchnitz revised edition / T1875</li>

<li>1878 :
    The C. Kegan Paul revised second English edition / KP1878</li>

<li>1885 :
    The Chapman and Hall &ldquo;New Edition&rdquo;
    (printed by Virtue) / CH1885</li>

<li>1890 :
    The Chapman and Hall &ldquo;New Edition&rdquo;
    (printed by Clowes) / CH1890</li>

<li>1895 :
    The Chapman and Hall &ldquo;New Edition&rdquo;
    (printed by George Bell) / CH1895</li>

<li>1896 :
    The Archibald Constable &ldquo;De Luxe&rdquo;
    edition (heavily cut and revised) / AC1896</li>

<li>1950 :
    The Modern Library edition (introduced by Lionel Stevenson and based on
    the 1859 first edition) / ML1950</li>

</ul>

<p>I have created flat-file documentary editions of &ldquo;Indicates the
Approaches of Fever&rdquo; for all of these books, and it is only a matter of
time (and some coding) before all of them are available on the web with live
notes. At present, I have created over 11,000 lines of html for this
project, and I have spent more than 60 hours coding the three available
texts. I estimate that it will take about 70-80 hours to code the remaining
electronic documents.</p>

<p class="Indent">And what of the critically edited
texts promised in the title of
the website? These are to come. In the first part of my introduction, I
offer interpretations of some of the changes made across these editions and
give my reasoning for why three separate works exist among these documents;
I will continue this interpretative work as I begin to critically edit the
documentary editions that I have already created.</p>


<h3>Procedures</h3>

<p>This project presented many obstacles. No reliable historical electronic
text exists for any of these documents. Also, the majority of the editions
appear in entirely different formats, with different line breaks. For this
reason, it was not feasible to conduct my work with a Lindstrand or Hinman
collator, which significantly slowed down the process of transcription and
collation.</p>

<p class="Indent">To start my project, I began with a copy of <span
style="font-style: italic; ">Richard Feverel </span>downloaded from Project
Gutenberg. (This text was most likely based on one of the later Archibald
Constable<span style="font-style: italic; "> </span>editions, but its
origins remain unclear.) I edited this text as a Macintosh Pages document to
conform to the 1950 Modern Library edition. Having revised the file and
saved it under its new name (ML1950), I saved a second copy under the new
name, CH1859, and then began collating it against UVa&rsquo;s copy of the 1859
Chapman and Hall first edition.  As I moved through the file, I updated line
breaks, pagination, and made notes in brackets whenever I discovered a
variant. (See sample document.) Before accepting any variant, though, I
again compared my notes and my transcriptions to the original printed books.
In this way, although editing the 1859 edition, I invariably caught many
small errors made in my editing and transcription of the 1950 Modern Library
edition. I then moved on to the Tauchnitz edition, following the same
procedure, but saving a second copy of the CH1859 document under the new
name T1875. Again, whenever I came across variants, I made notes in brackets
and referred to the original copies. In this way, I was able to produce very
refined versions of all of the editions used in this project.</p>

<p class="Indent">Except for the 1878 C. Kegan Paul edition, all of the
documentary texts that appear in this project were drawn from the personal
collection I created while working on this project. Finding a copy of the
1859 Chapman and Hall first edition available for sale and realizing how
useful it would be to have a copy immediately on hand, I purchased it for my
(growing) collection.  Collating this copy against my transcription of the
UVa copy was a very useful exercise; it turned up a few additional variants
that I had missed. As I have time, I intend to collate my current
documentary editions against other multiple copies in order to catch any
further changes that might have been missed. A further method to check and
improve the texts would be to translate images of the original documents via
OCR and then to collate those texts against my existing ones via Juxta. I
will probably carry this out only after I have photographed all of the pages
from the editions currently documented in this project (<span
style="font-style: italic; ">i.e.</span> in this list above; also see
&ldquo;Design Goals&rdquo; below).<span style="font-weight: bold; "></span></p>


<h3>Design and Editorial Goals</h3>

<p>Carsten Clark and I hope to create a website that is easy to navigate and
practical for study. Users should not have to read a
&ldquo;how-to&rdquo; manual or
lengthy introduction to learn how to use the site; design and organization
should be as intuitive and flexible as possible, allowing users the option
of reading and working with texts in as many ways possible. For example,
historical collations will be provided in a table that can be sorted, as
well as in the form of &ldquo;floating&rdquo; and &ldquo;sticky&rdquo;
notes that users can
manipulate or dismiss depending on their reading preferences (see no. 2 for
more details).</p>

<ol class="LongList">

<li>To provide documentary editions of
all editions of <em>The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</em>
that were published during Meredith&rsquo;s lifetime, as well as
documentary editions of influential later printings (such as the Modern
Library edition, based on the 1859 Chapman and Hall first
edition)

<ul>

<li>Preserve original pagination of copies
     (currently available for CH1859, T1875, and AC1896)</li>

<li>Preserve original line breaks of copies
     (currently available for CH1859, T1875, and AC1896)</li>

<li>Preserve overall design (<span style="font-style: italic; ">e.g.
</span>headers, footers, type size, justification) as originally printed
(to be implemented)</li>

<li>Present texts in page-by-page format with horizontal scrolling, to
facilitate reading between books and their electronic versions as well as
to aid the reading and navigation of electronic versions (currently
available)</li>

<li>Provide photographs of original documents, linked, page by page, to
electronic, marked-up versions (to be implemented)</li>

<li>Provide profiles of all texts studied for each documentary edition,
including location of copies, photographs of bindings, descriptions of
bibliographic features, provenance, and any other information potentially of
interest to students and scholars (available for CH1859)</li>

<li>Provide pdf versions of all texts to facilitate printing and study
   (to be implemented)</li>

<li>Allow users to hide notes, so that they can read an uninterrupted
&ldquo;clear text&rdquo; (currently available)</li>

</ul>
</li>

<li>To provide historical collations of
all editions of <em>The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</em>
that were published during Meredith&rsquo;s lifetime, as well as
documentary editions of influential later printings (such as the Modern
Library edition, based on the 1859 Chapman and Hall first edition)
<em>(eight texts examined and edited; the rest in progress)</em>

<ul>

<li>Categorize variants first into accidentals and substantives, and then
into subcategories (<span style="font-style: italic; ">e.g.</span>
capitalization, hyphenation, spelling, &amp;c.) (currently available for
all editions)</li>

<li>Publish all variants in a table that can be sorted by users according
to chapters, categories, and/or subcategories (currently available, but to
be refined)</li>

<li>Color-code texts of documentary editions so that accidentals appear in
one color (green) and substantives in another (blue); but also allow users
the option to read the texts without these codes, if they so desire
(currently available)</li>

<li>Offer users the ability to read &ldquo;floating&rdquo; notes on historical
collations; when desired, notes appear as users read though texts but vanish
unless users click on them (currently available)</li>

<li>Offer users the ability to read &ldquo;sticky&rdquo; notes on historical
collations; by clicking on the background of any page, all notes for that
page automatically appear, which users can dismiss one-by-one by clicking on
notes individually or as a group via a button (currently available)</li>

</ul>
</li>

<li>Create critical editions of the
three separate works of <em>The Ordeal of Richard Feverel</em>

<ul>

<li>Critically edit and publish editions of the 1859 Chapman and Hall first
edition, 1875 Tauchnitz edition/1878 C. Kegan Paul edition (details to come
as we sort out the nuances between these, which constitute the birth of
novel as a second work), and the 1896 Archibald Constable &ldquo;De
Luxe&rdquo;
edition (editing to be performed; will be implemented via html)</li>

<li>Provide notes on historical collation and notes explaining rationale
for emendations (to come)</li>

<li>Create an introductory essay, discussing the publishing history of
<span style="font-style: italic; ">The Ordeal of Richard Feverel </span>and
the methods and procedures employed while editing the various versions of
the novel (currently available)</li>

</ul>
</li>

<li>Provide a way for users to submit
anonymous feedback and suggestions for the site&rsquo;s future improvement
<em>(to be designed and implemented)</em></li>

</ol>

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